There is a new, short (20′) documentary film which focuses on the people working at the LIGO Hanford Observatory. I think the interest and audience for the film are both pretty limited, but there is a nice episode at about the 11′ mark which features UO physicist Robert Schofield doing an impromptu demonstration of how pendula provide isolation from noise sources and identifying sources of seismic noise. Link to Film

For those interested, here is an older documentary focusing more on the science of LIGO: Einstein’s Messengers

Oregon physicists were part of two experiments — at the Stanford Linear Accelerator and the Large Hadron Collider — that are among Physics WorldMagazine’s top-ten list of breakthroughs in the physical sciences during 2012.

Using tiny radiation pressure forces — generated each time light is reflected off a surface — University of Oregon physicists converted an optical field, or signal, from one color to another. Aided by a “dark mode,” the conversion occurs through the coupling between light and a mechanical oscillator, without interruption by thermal mechanical vibrations.

At Seattle’s Living Computer Museum which opened in October, one of the oldest exhibits at the is a PDP-7 made by Digital Equipment Corporation. Designed in the mid-1960s, it is believed to be the only working model of this machine in the world. The computer operated in Harlan Lefevre’s lab for many years.

The Oregon Department of Education recently awarded $450,000 to the University of Oregon and the Eugene School District to improve high school and middle school students’ performance in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The partnership between the Eugene School Disctrict and University of Oregon, as well as industry, is co-directed by Dean Livelybrooks, senior instructor at the Department of Physics.